Food in the Occupation of Japan facts for kids

The U.S. Occupation of Japan happened from 1945 to 1952. This was right after Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, which officially ended World War II. During this time, Japan kept its system of rationing food, which had started during the war to save resources. However, neither Japanese officials nor the U.S. military could manage the food supply well. This led to a severe hunger crisis across the country. This problem even affected how the U.S. dealt with other countries in East Asia, as American leaders tried to help solve the food shortage.

Why Japan Faced a Food Crisis

Japanese food production dropped by about 26% in the last two years of the Pacific War. The government focused on sending resources like fertilizers and tools to the war effort instead of to farms. This meant farmers had fewer materials to grow food. Also, many farms and supplies were destroyed during the war.

Because of a lack of fuel for fishing boats and not enough fertilizer, the amount of food people ate each day went down. Before the attack on Pearl Harbor, people ate about 2,000 calories a day. By 1944, this was 1,900 calories. After the Allied bombing of Japan and with fewer working-age men, daily calories dropped even more to 1,680 by the summer of 1945.

Okumura Ayao, a Japanese food expert, remembered how bad the food crisis was in the countryside. He said:

From 1944 on, even in the countryside, the athletic grounds of local schools were converted into sweet potato fields. And we ate every part of the sweet potato plant, from the leaf to the tip of the root…For protein, we ate beetles, beetle larvae, and other insects that we found at the roots of the plants we picked, which we roasted or mashed. Even in the countryside, food was scarce.

The problem got worse because Korea and Taiwan, which used to be Japan's rice-producing colonies, became free at the end of the war. This meant Japan had to rely only on its own farms. Bad weather also led to poor harvests in 1944 and 1945. On top of that, about eight million Japanese people returned home from these newly freed colonies, which made the demand for food even higher.

Rationing and City Life During the Crisis

In 1940, the Japanese government started a food rationing system. This system controlled how much of certain foods, like vegetables, sugar, seafood, dairy, and rice, people could get. Adults were only allowed about 1.3 to 1.8 ounces of meat and 1.8 ounces of fish per day. By 1945, this amount was cut even more, to only 1,793 calories daily. These small rations were a big problem in large cities like Tokyo, Nagoya, Kobe, Osaka, and Yokohama, where people depended entirely on government rations.

People in smaller towns and rural areas were not as affected at first. This changed when the Allies bombed Japan in 1944. Farming families were usually safe from hunger because they grew their own food. However, most Japanese citizens bought food from markets, which relied on the rationing system. Because of this, the Japanese government told families to leave cities and go to the countryside. Parents sent their children to live with relatives. About 1,303,200 children were moved. About 857,000 went to live with family, while 446,200 were taken in by Buddhist temples, inns, or local families.

Still, moving to the countryside didn't help much. Children there still didn't get enough food. Their rations kept getting smaller. From 1943 to 1945, a child's daily rations dropped from 19.2 ounces to 14.4 ounces.

Hashimoto Kumiko, a girl who moved to a farm during the Pacific War, described her hunger in a book called Food and War in Mid-Twentieth Century East Asia:

Day after day we ate watery gruel in the cottage of the farmhouse to which we had been evacuated. Things got even worse, and our daily chore was to gather field grasses. One day, I came across a book of Western cooking among the few remaining items on the bookshelf. I turned the pages to shiny photographs of roast beef, Spanish omelets, Scotch eggs. It became my secret pastime to stare at the beautifully taken photos and read the book over and over. I didn't care what the outcome of the war might be. I swore in my heart that when the war was over, I would eat all these dishes. Looking back on that time now, I smile ruefully that I was a hungry maiden with a big appetite.

Unlike Germany, Japan's government continued to work mostly the same way it did before, even under U.S. military occupation. However, the U.S. quickly removed high-ranking Japanese military leaders who survived the war. Many were arrested and taken into U.S. custody. Top Japanese political jobs, like Prime Minister, were quickly filled by Japanese civilian politicians. But for the first few years, the Emperor mostly just approved the people chosen by the U.S. occupation leaders. Because of this, many Japanese people felt their civilian government was not truly in charge. They felt a power gap after losing the war, which was made more confusing by the U.S. occupation.

The U.S. first wanted to make Japan more democratic and slowly reduce its military presence. But instead, they started the Reverse Course. This made Japan more open to American leadership in trade and other areas. The U.S. hoped to turn Japan into a capitalist country that would oppose communism. One big reason the Americans kept a Japanese government in place was so Japanese officials could handle food distribution under Japanese law. So, the U.S. authorities kept rules against selling food outdoors and continued Japan's wartime food rationing system.

Unfortunately, neither Japanese nor U.S. leaders could properly control the buying, selling, and distribution of food across the country. A worldwide drop in food production in 1945 and 1946 made the problem worse. The rations limited the average adult to only 1,042 calories per day. This was only about 65% of the minimum calories needed to survive. Rations were also often delivered late, making things harder. In some places, like Tokyo and Yokohama, rations were even canceled. The average person in Tokyo only received 70% of their planned rations, which gave them about 775 calories per day for six months in 1946.

How People Responded to Hunger

U.S. Food Aid to Japan

During the Occupation, the Communist Party used the hunger crisis to blame the U.S. for the famine in Japan.

To stop this message and prevent communism from spreading in Asia, the U.S. sent grain and troops. Koreans were also facing famine and had similar complaints against their government. To prevent communism from growing in Asia, the U.S. used the Reverse course strategy. They divided food between Japan and Korea, sometimes giving less aid to Japan to help Korea, which was more unstable. In 1946, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur, who was in charge of all American-occupied areas in East Asia, sent a message to General Dwight D. Eisenhower. In it, MacArthur said:

I am considering authorizing an immediate diversion from allocation of wheat to Japan of a token shipment of twenty-five thousand tons to Korea to alleviate a serious psychological and political crisis wherein adverse leftist elements are capitalizing on the present food shortage. I am convinced that failure to provide this token shipment at once will constitute a serious threat to the United States Army Military Government in Korea.

School Lunch Programs

In 1947, U.S. authorities started school lunch programs in Japan. These programs aimed to give children in big cities, who were hit hard by the food crisis, proper nutrition. American charities and religious groups created the Licensed Agencies for Relief in Asia (LARA) to send food, clothes, and other help to Japan.

The school lunch programs were expanded across Japan in 1951. The goal was to provide each student with 600 calories and 25 grams of protein. The lunches usually included a warm main dish, a bread roll, and a glass of milk. The bread was not given for its health benefits. Americans wanted to sell their extra wheat to other countries to make more money. Milk was chosen because it could quickly help children who were not getting enough food.

The Black Market System

Some people took advantage of the hunger crisis by selling goods that were hard to get through the rationing system.

Criminal groups were especially known for being involved in the black market. Many traded ramen, which they made from the extra wheat the U.S. sent. Ramen was actually inspired by the Chinese noodle soup chuka soba. This food was very important during the famine because its noodles were filling and had many calories.

U.S. authorities quietly allowed the black market to operate by not focusing on large suppliers. Instead, George Solt, who wrote The Untold History of Ramen, says the government pretended to oppose the black market by cracking down on individual sellers and buyers. Historian John Dower states that 1.22 million ordinary people faced consequences for getting goods from the black market in 1946. This number grew to 1.36 million in 1947, and again to 1.5 million in 1948. Solt suggests that police and government leaders might have received some of the money from the illegal food trade. This could explain why they quietly accepted the black market. This idea supports the possibility that corrupt officials helped supply goods to this trade.

Food Culture After the Occupation

The Shin-Yokohama Rāmen Museum, a food amusement park, opened in Yokohama, Japan, in 1994. It is mostly about ramen. However, George Solt says this museum has overemphasized the role of Japanese people returning home in making chuka soba popular. It ignores the Korean and Chinese workers in Japan who sold chuka soba on the black market. More importantly, the museum treats chuka soba as a Japanese food, even though it was originally a Chinese creation.

Ramen was often mentioned in films, radio, music, and TV shows after the occupation. In the 1954 film Bangiku (later known as Late Chrysanthemums), a woman takes her mother to a ramen restaurant to celebrate her engagement. The daughter happily eats the ramen, but the mother is shocked. She remembers when ramen was only eaten to stop hunger. The idea of eating it during good times upset the mother. This idea is also found in poems and songs from that time, which were played on the radio.

One such poem (translated from Japanese) went: